Construction Completion Financing

Projects stop for reasons the original budget never listed: costs that outran the contingency, a reserve that ran out early, a draw returned unfunded, a failed contractor relationship, liens that froze title. By the time a sponsor seeks completion capital, the project is part construction site, part negotiation. The financing question is no longer "what will it cost to build" but "what will it take to finish, and what is it worth finished."

Evoque Commercial arranges construction completion financing for partially completed residential projects. The work is evaluated on verifiable facts: work in place, true remaining cost to complete, the lien and title picture, existing debt, and the completed value the market will pay. Completion transactions from $3 million to $7 million sit in one of our core ranges, with larger projects through $25 million structured to their facts.

This page will not pretend. Not every stalled project can be completed on terms that work. Sometimes remaining cost and finished value no longer support new capital, and the honest review says so early. That candor is why the review is worth requesting before the situation narrows.

When completion financing fits

The program fits a project stopped short of the finish with a verifiable path to it: scope established, completed value supporting the structure, a legal picture that resolves at closing. A project not yet started belongs on ground-up construction financing; a finished but unsold project is an inventory conversation. Where the core problem is a specific event (a lender that stopped funding draws, a budget consumed by cost overruns), those pages go deeper; this program is the financing behind the resolution.

The situations completion financing addresses

The files arrive under different names with the same structure: cost overruns that exhausted budget and contingency; interest reserves that ran out mid-schedule; draws unfunded because the loan is out of balance or the lender's circumstances changed; contractor disputes and terminations that stopped work; mechanics' liens filed by unpaid trades; permit deadlines approaching while work stands still; and existing lenders replaced (or supplemented) so the project can move again. Several often arrive together; each problem produces the next.

What the financing may do

Depending on the file, a completion structure may retire the existing loan or supplement it alongside a cooperative senior; fund the verified remaining cost to complete; re-establish interest and carry reserves through completion and sale or lease-up; fund lien resolution and settlements at closing; and restore a contingency sized to how the project has behaved. The structure is built around a completion plan (scope, contractor, schedule), not just a payoff figure: capital without a credible builder finishes nothing.

What capital sources evaluate

Verification replaces projection on a completion file. Work in place is inspected, not accepted from the draw history. Remaining cost to complete comes from the current schedule of values and an independent review, not the original budget. The lien and title picture comes from title work and payoff and release documentation.

The story of what happened is checked against records; sponsors who tell it straight, including their own missteps, materially strengthen their files. The finished project is valued as the market will receive it, and the structure is tested against it. Leverage, pricing, and conditions are confirmed during project review; on completion files above all, they follow the verified facts.

Sponsorship, equity, and the sources-and-uses

Completion structures usually ask something of everyone. Fresh sponsor equity is often part of the answer, alongside new capital and sometimes concessions from existing parties. The sources-and-uses is rebuilt from the project's present position: payoff or reinstatement figures, verified remaining costs, lien resolution, reserves, and contingency. The completion team is underwritten too: sometimes the original contractor continues on revised terms, sometimes a replacement is what makes the file work.

Exit strategy

Completion capital is short-chapter capital: finish the project, then hand off to the exit it always had: sales for for-sale product, lease-up and a stabilized refinance or sale for rental. Exit assumptions are re-underwritten at today's market, not the one the project was conceived in; where the product will lease, the handoff to construction-to-bridge financing is planned inside the completion structure, not left for later.

Documentation to expect

More than a new-construction file: the existing debt's loan documents and payoff or reinstatement statements, the full draw history and pay applications, the contractor's contract, schedule of values, and status, lien filings and release or settlement documentation, litigation status, updated plans and the remaining-scope budget, permits and deadlines, the sponsor's account of events with records to match, and a rebuilt sources-and-uses. Third-party reports (work-in-place inspection, cost-to-complete review, appraisal, title) are ordered early; they drive the structure. The developer document checklist assembles the completion-specific list.

Where completion files get difficult

The hardest files share features: records that stop where the trouble started, disputes generating legal exposure faster than resolution, work in place that fails inspection and must be redone, values now below what the capital stack needs, and sponsors who arrive after exhausting every extension. Time is the real adversary: every idle month adds carry, weathering, and lien exposure, which is the reason to bring the file forward while the facts still have room to be structured.